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Mkini BM and Chinese carried the news about Ezam Mohd Nor and Palaniviel et al. to be appointed senator. (Too bad, No subscription to Mkini English plus The Malaysian Insider hasn’t posted up the news yet).

Have more to say about the Senate (Dewan Negara) of Malaysia but I’ll see if I’ve the chance next time. Just a quick thought here…

The members (of the senate) to be appointed by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong shall be persons who in his opinion have rendered distinguished public service or have achieved distinction in the professions, commerce, industry, agriculture, cultural activities or social service or are representative of racial minorities or are capable of representing the interests of aborigines. (Underlined words are mine)

Can someone please just stand out, and tell the people that, it is perfectly OK to drink (but not get drunk and cause unrest) because drinking or not is really a personal issue. The god will decide if one will rot in hell for drinking, but the state should just stay out of a person’s business.

Yes it is religion issue. And since when Malaysia is a theocratic country? The attack and the counter-attack are making religion issue dominating the country (once again), and further “religionizes” the country. Besides, it is in a way endorsing message that drinking is oh so bad it’s a sin greater than corruption etc and one shall rot in hell for drinking yadda yadda.

So what if the leaders or their son/daughter drink? They are hypocrite, but oh how I wish people can just add one more tagline, it’s ok to drink, we are libertarian society…

Disclaimer: This entry is just a self-proclaimed biologist’s rant and extremely disconnected due to the low processing speed of my brain… This entry is also written according to my knowledge (which is bit and pieces of here and there), lack of time really means lack of references and fact-verification, i.e. extremely un-scholarly and any mistakes or wrong facts shall be shouted at in the comment section!

After all, what so great about tiger? Mind you, I dislike Tiger beer too (I’ll still drink if you offer me though :P) And I’m quite a mammalophobic, mammals are good to look at, just don’t come near me please. Hah.

Tiger is afterall a fierce animal that kills cattles and humans and hence should be killed instead of conserved. That’s according to Kelantan Menteri Besar (Chief Minister) Nik Aziz.

(Enter sentimental)

What people do not know is, a city boy like me, and perhaps many more people out there pay to go into jungle, not to see tiger (because it takes one first prize in Magnum/Toto to see one), but to enjoy the scene and sound that nature offers us. Mother Earth offers us forests, not concrete jungle, certainly not a monoculture “forest” e.g. oil palm plantation.

Tiger is top predator. By conserving the top predator, we protect its food. That really means our forest has to be full of life, full of wild boar, wild cattles (Gaur?, Banteng), (Sambar, Fang) deers etc. And to keep them, you need to make sure that the forest is, well, forest. That means you have many impressive big trees that take god knows how many people to hug. That means you hear gibbons’ and birds’ noisy calls every morning. That also means, if your (big) animal sighting fails you, you are still greeted by insects, spiders, and occasionally (more than often actually) leeches. Oh, and you may have to fight rattans, thorny crazy plants, but the masochist you like it, at least it’s better than the thorny fences…

(Wait, do you know that some people don’t really think insects are “animal”?)

(Enter politics)

In a country that celebrate (supposedly) diversity and plurality, we chose to forget about biodiversity and embrace economy. Politicians told us, we need to sacrifice, to eradicate poverty, to… uhmmm, become “high income nation” by 10 years later? Our Prime Minister came out with a worst than ever slogan, “1Malaysia”…

OK, at least it is a scary slogan. Because we can substitute that “1” with “mono”, and that seems to be where our country is going to. After all, PM never really outlines what really is “1Malaysia”.

I remember seeing this printed advertisement in one bus stop, it says “1Sime Darby”. Will 1Malaysia turn into land of monoculture, more precisely, 1Oil-Palm Plantation? Not likely, but how many pristine forest will we have by then?

Tiger lives in pristine forest (not really, but let’s not go that far for now), tiger lives in forest with large area; tiger doesn’t live in 1Oil-Palm Plantation, and tiger will more likely to kill you (due to starvation) with a small patchy forest.

The problem is, I believe most of the university students (minus biologists and ecologists maybe) can’t really tell you that while 1Monoculture-plantation, raped forest and pristine forest are all green, they are very different when it comes to biodiversity, uhm, or to suit the theme, survivability of a tiger 😉

Often enough, people will just tell you: “OK mah, oil palm plantation is also green and ‘forested area’ mah“. I read “Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things (Vol 1)” (sadly it’s not with me right now), one director of forestry department (or something like that) said that everything green is considered forest. Oh wow.

One officer of MPOC (Malaysian Palm Oil Council) said during a Oil Palm conference that Malaysia set a “national goal” to make sure that half of Malaysia land is forest. Haven’t verified this, will do it in another entry.

But I don’t believe, and even if it is, the “forest” must be defined as any land with one tree in one big patch of land…

I figure it will be damn good to see a picture with a tiger (Malayan tiger) sitting next to a tree and surrounded by bare soil…

I’m a bad blogger. Told Planet of the Monyets that I’ll join the Tiger Blogfest roughly one month ago. And then completely put aside the event until, well, one day before I’m suppose to write anything about tiger. Hah. Alright, spent some time to make my blog “tiger-blogfest-compliant”, not sure what to write for tomorrow’s entry though. J-J-Just toooooo lazy to write, sigh… but for the sake of tiger (hmmmmm, really?) and for the sake of rekindling the activist in me, I’m gonna write~~

Tiger blogfest solidarity message

The tiger is our national animal. Our heritage. But today only less than 500 of them
remain in the wild. As Malaysians, we need to stand up and protect our heritage.
Speak to your children. Speak to your leaders. Everyone of us can make a difference.
For further information, please visit MYCAT (www.malayantiger.net), WWF Malaysia
(www.wwf.org.my) and Department of Wildlife & National Parks (www.wildlife.gov.my)